Barney Frank’s questions about Big Conservative Government’s advocates’ unwavering and prurient interest in regulating pot and sex get no respect from co-panelists George “Gateway Drug” Will and Paul “I Smirk” Ryan. Then the Massachusetts Congressman gets totally shut down by lame duck anchor Christiane Amanpour, who’d prefer to return to her chosen topic of ‘social mobility’ than let Barney deftly pierce the inherent personal liberty contradictions of her guests’ preferred regulatory regime.

Barney Frank revels in the opportunity to speak directly to people who have no response but to smirk at him (Ryan) or to ask for another several decades of pot research before making up their minds whether it’s a gateway drug (Will).

I seriously cannot believe I am again writing a post with one eye on the wire, still waiting for a conclusion to the debt-ceiling debacle, looking for real news to read, instead of just thrice re-boiled tea leaves. But here I am—here we are—sweating out a crisis that is as malicious as it is manufactured, knowing that when a “resolution” comes, no matter which version/option/compromise we get, it will be both terrible and impermanent.

What did the Republican letter at the beginning of the lame duck say? Until the tax issue and the funding of the government gets worked out, they would not move forward on anything. That was the threat. And in fact, they won on both of those counts in a big way. They got the Bush tax cuts extended for two years, and they can hold out at that time for another extension. And they stopped an omnibus spending bill and secured a short-term continuing resolution, which blocked funding of health care and financial reform and gave the next Congress an early opportunity to set spending priorities.

That was really all they cared about.

Today’s announcement of a $200 billion dollar program to allow businesses to write off their capital expenditures up front in 2010 and 2011 at full cost (which would only cost $30 billion in the long run) hasn’t received the widest reception from the economic profession.

After all the times I’ve heard rich conservatives complain about how unfair it is to force the wealthy to bear a disproportionate share of the tax burden, surely they’d agree that it’s unfair to expect the wealthy to bear the spending burden all by themselves.

When Louisianan’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal says, “We need our federal government exactly for this kind of crisis,” you know that the Obama administration could be engaging to a greater degree. Much greater, perhaps in the manner Robert Reich suggests — putting BP under temporary receivership.

The panel announced for ABC’s This Week should have been a warning: “Danger: Really Stupid and Dishonest Comments Likely.”